It is widely agreed that parents play an important role in the healthy development of their adolescent children (Grotevant, 1998). But, parenting adolescents is made difficult by recent social trends and the normal changing of family relationships. It is also agreed that parents of adolescents have fewer available sources of support than parents of younger children (Carnegie Council, 1995). The parenting stress that results has the potential to adversely affect parent mental health and result in negative youth outcomes. The proposed study, the candidate's dissertation research, will set the stage for a research career in which innovative interventions to be delivered in primary care settings will be developed and tested. Guided by Abidin's Parenting Stress Model (1990), this study will test the mediating effect of social support on the relationship between parenting stress and the parent adolescent relationship and the effects on parenting stress of parent perceptions of youth behavior, family conflict, and various demographic variables. The study will use a secondary analysis of data from a diverse national sample of families. [unreadable] [unreadable]